Sino-Japanese Linguistic Influence
After humanity broke free of the confines of its homeworld, Earth's dominant languages, among them Chinese and Japanese, began asserting their influence over their colonies' culture, spoken and written linguistic system. History Humanity managed to escape their homeworld and establish colonies throughout the Sol system, at first confined in the inner part. However, after the invention of the Epstein drive, mankind ventured past the Asteroid Belt and settled on the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. The colonies were influenced by many major Earther cultures. Earth's languages grew new variations outside the bounds of their traditional home, including strong influences from prominent Asian cultures, like Chinese and Japanese. Although many more languages blended, those with a larger number of speakers asserted their firm influence over less common tongues. Pluri-ethnic cultures Belter Belter Creole (a.k.a. Lang Belta in the TV series) is the result of several donor languages having blended their vocabulary and grammatical properties into a single, unitary tongue. The process took several generations to achieve the threshold of a consensus discernibly distinct language, as Belter Creole was diverging from its donor languages. Chinese greatly influenced the final language, especially in the more frequently used vocabulary, more so than Japanese. This is due in part to China's superpower position prior to the unification of Earth under the United Nations, while Japanese cultural influences, although still a major regional economical force, was diminishing with the economic rise of China. However, Chinese characters are rarely used among the Belt's populace, having standardized on Latin to transcribe phrases and words of Sino-Japanese origin. One noteworthy example of Belter vocabulary originating from Chinese is "dui" (对) used for an affirmative response interchangeably with the word "yes".dui - (对) - borrowed from Mandarin. An affirmative response to a request for confirmation. analog to "yes", "correct" (adj.), "agreed", "true" (adj.) Chapter 6 Chapter 9, 17 Chapter 17, 26, 31, 41, 42, 44 like "Dwayne" but without the "n" at the end Another example, "xie xie" (谢谢), is routinely used for showing gratitude and is largely the Belter equivalent of the English "thank you".xie xie - (谢谢) - borrowed from Mandarin. "thank you" chapter 7 These words are routinely intermixed with words originating from other major tongues, such as Spanish, French, and German. Martian On Mars, Chinese characters are used when tradition is emphasized, a common practice in the MCRN, where ships names and mottos are written in Chinese. Iconographic uses are also common. Names Sino-Japanese cultural influences can also be seen in the names of people, vessels, and organizations, such as Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile. Some words have homonyms in Japanese or Chinese adding some ambiguity to the meaning. |-|Vessels = |-|People = Belter language from books versus TV The team of Daniel and Ty concocted a crude Belter language when they developed the books. They relied on readers' ability to look up definitions in order to understand meanings. It was composed of words from a plurality of donor languages directly intertwined among one another within sentences. When they went to produce the story for television, they decided that the language they had built wasn't suitable for the new medium, so Ty endorsed Nick Farmer to create a language that was distinct, while still maintaining the sense of pluri-ethnic origins, and one constructed with a greater degree of rigor than what had been used for the books. The authors of The Expanse recommend students focus on the TV/Farmer version of Belter Creole for any serious analysis. Notes * Chinese characters have an ideographic/iconographic aspect and can express or allude to concepts alongside the spoken sound of a name. * Standard Chinese is transliterated into Latin script using the phonetic "pinyin" system. * When reading transliterated Chinese, there will be inherent ambiguity and a fair degree of context may be needed for correct reconstruction. Another simplification often made is skipping the pinyin tonal diacritics, thereby creating additional homonyms as Chinese syllable tones are critical for semantic distinction. Media File:MCRN_Destroyer_Shandian_shadowing_Arboghast.jpg File:Sutton-001.png Scirocco badge.png External Links * Wikipedia - Category:Belter language